6th Jülich Lecture: The AMS Experiment on the International Space Station

In this lecture, Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Dr. Samuel C. C. Ting (MIT) presents the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). The AMS is a high precision general-purpose particle physics detector that has been constructed in the past twelve years by a group of 600 scientists and engineers from 16 countries for the operation on board of the International Space Station (ISS). In May 2011 AMS was launched with the last flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour and installed on the ISS.

Since the first day AMS is fully operational and delivers high quality measurements of cosmic rays with a precision and a statistical volume never reached before. The status of the experiment and the perspectives for the coming years are presented.